Halloween Edition: Desert Island Top 10 - Gothic Songs

Back in the day, the official magazine of Tower Records - Pulse - had a section called "The Desert Island Top 10".  The premise is - if you were stranded on a desert island, but had the option of taking ten of anything, what would you take?  For the Halloween season, for this post, I will select my Top 10 favorite gothic songs of all time, in no particular order.  Yes, I cut my teeth on '80s gothic.  Wore the black lipstick, the guyliner and sported the obligatory black, read the Anne Rice chronicles.  These are the songs I would die for.  Prepared to be spooked!  Tell me your favorite songs in the comments section!

1.  Christian Death "Figurative Theater" (1982) - As a teen, there was nothing more shocking than L.A. deathrock band, Christian Death, and singer, Rozz Williams, who was occasionally known to wear dead cats as part of his scene's morbid couture.  "In the shallow holes of a thousand eyes..." start the lyrics to a song that I copied onto notebooks as an angst-ridden teen, the words seemingly matching the black mood I felt.  The violent drumbeat and lurching guitar set to Rozz's droning voice, all of it churning together and frothing to a spitting intensity.  It sounded forbidden then.  It kind of sounds dated now, although it is easy to see the influence they have had on music through the decades.  It was still a sad day in 1998 when Rozz Williams committed suicide, finally giving into the darkness.  Rozz was no poseur.  He truly walked in the darkness.

2.  45 Grave  "Evil" (1983)- "Music that Christians don't have to play backwards," says the announcer in the video below.  And that description fits yet another California deathrock band, 45 Grave.  This band was always really fun, a clever mixture of '60s surf rock, punk, and horror, they had a stage presence that was as much a part of their performance as their music, fronted by sinister frontwoman, Dinah Cancer, looking like something out of The Addams Family.  Although "Evil" sounds like it could be the opening theme from The Munsters, except with Cancer growling her condemnations of, "You're evil!".  "Sleep In Safety" was an important album to me in my preteen years and remains, all these decades later, the perfect Halloween album.

3.  Tamaryn "Softcore" (2016) - Kiwi artist, Tamaryn, now on tour with Lush, is one of the newer artists at the forefront of the shoegaze revival, but she is known to veer into darker directions, like this gothic gem.  The song is off this year's album, and the video here is off of this year's live KEXP performance.  Amped-up drums and a caustic bass line sounding like something right out of Sisters of Mercy, Tamaryn's haunted moaning, and guitars screeching, whispered samples, everything coalescing and blending into something that resembles a fevered pitch - something at once beautiful, disturbing, and cool af.  Tamaryn is a new artist that you should definitely check out.  I will be reviewing her entire new album soon.

4.  Xmal Deutschland "Polarlicht" (1986) - An oft forgotten German act, they signed to the prestigious 4AD label who was responsible for releasing much of the gothic bands of the '80s. This song made in onto a mix cassette tape I had as a teen, and I soon had a chance to explore more of their music.  The song is mournful and dreamy with Anja Huwe's powerful voice soaring above the landscape, but don't expect to understand it unless you speak German, Sadly, this band never made it out of the '80s, but their impact on gothic and darkwave is undeniable.  Any true fan of the genre can tell you about Xmal Deutschland.

5.  Cocteau Twins "Garlands" (1982) - Ah, which one of my collections would be complete without Cocteau Twins?  This song is off of their debut album.  They were a new band out of Grangemouth, Scotland, and this is the only album to feature Will Heggie as a member with his heavy bass guitar.  He would soon leave to form proto-shoegaze band, Lowlife.  His departure would allow them to explore the more ethereal experiments that they are known for.  But this album?  Straight up gothic.  Heggie's bass chords dominate.  Robin Guthrie scratches out spooky noises on his guitar, admitting only later that he only did this because he really didn't know how to play.  Elizabeth Fraser's wavering voice offers the names of pretty flowers in a way that they evoke wrongness rather than beauty.  This whole album is a classic and one that I listen to several times a year.

6.  Modern English "16 Days" (1981) - When people think of Modern English, they think of MTV, '80s one-hit wonders, and their one big hit, "I Melt With You", a happy-go-lucky love tune.  They don't think of a gothic band, and, yet, their first album was just that.  The song starts out with eerie guitar effects that only grow more nightmarish as the song progresses, followed by samples extolling the horrors of the Cold War era. The bass line is earth-shattering, and Robbie Grey spits out his lyrics in a post-punk fury.  Then the song ends in a wash of futile noise and chaos.  This Mortal Coil would later cover this song as their very first single, with Liz Fraser from Cocteau Twins and Gordon Sharp from Cindytalk, another great goth band, on vocals.

7.  Bauhaus "She's In Parties"  (1983) - No goth collection would be complete without Bauhaus?  But whereas most might expect me to include the ubiquitous and Halloween-friendly "Bela Lugosi's Dead", the goth anthem, no, I am including this selection instead - the final single from their final album for more than twenty years.  These guys created this sound, created this genre.  Peter Murphy's vocals are savage, contrasting Daniel Ash's soft background pining.  The harmonica seems out of place, and yet Bauhaus offers one last stark masterpiece before venturing into different projects.  Believe me - Tones On Tail or Love & Rockets would have made it onto this list had I not already covered these bands extensively.

8.  Dead Can Dance - "De Profundis (Out of the Depths of Sorrow)"  (1985) - The very first time I heard Dead Can Dance was this song.  It was a life-changing experience.  I was blown away.  I never knew pop music could be so... panoramic.  The song goes from silence and explodes into an orchestral swathe so huge that you can't help see images, and then Lisa Gerrard's voice crashes like a hurricane against a mountainside, singing, not in words, but pure emotion.  Then the song unravels with a single male singing a wordless Gregorian chant alongside the peals of a bell that sound not so much monastic as pagan.  Dead Can Dance defy classification, but it was the goths who loved them first.

9. Sisters of Mercy  "Black Planet"  (1985)  - The album this song came from became so definitively known as "goth" that everyone that came afterwards tried to imitate this sound - even Andrew Eldritch.  By the way, this is my favorite lineup of the Sisters, which includes the creative force of Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams, who went on to form The Mission UK right after this album.  In this song, Hussey's guitars are crystal clear with the Celtic lilt that he is known for, and Eldritch sings in that wavering, spooky bass that would be imitated by goths forever after.

10.  The Cure "Lullaby"  (1989) - I had a hard time picking the last band, because there are so many goth artists that I love.  But I had to ultimately settle on the most Halloweeny of songs.  The Cure had developed the reputation of being dark and gothic, but, in truth, by the time "Disintegration" came along, the band had veered into some very un-gothic territories involving caterpillars, love cats, being hot hot hot, and kisses.  Imagine Robert Smith prancing around in a huge teddy bear suit.  It was enough to make me shake my head.  But with this song - and accompanying creepy video - The Cure went dark and gothic again.  Maybe even more gothic than they had previously been.  All of the black-clad minions breathed a sigh of relief.  Smith sings about being eaten in his bed by a thousand shivering holes all set to the rhythm of pizzicato violins.  The song was nightmarish and troubling, and the band redeemed the genre to live for another Halloween.